A summary of Geoffrey R. Stone's Perilous
Times

The government of the United States has repeatedly moved to suppress
free speech and other civil liberties during times of national crisis as far
back as 1798. That is the point of departure for the broad and detailed
Perilous Times. With this book, Geoffrey Stone
provides an extensive legal history of the country, with a very pointed and
important focus on the freedom and constraints of its citizens to offer
critiques of the government itself at extreme moments. Though judicial
interpretation has consistently worked to augment defenses for such
protests, this only comes respectively later, after equally consistent
pressure from the government has circumvented all such existing defenses
during the time of crisis itself.

Stone slides sequentially through six periods of war fervor in this
study, and he divides these cases into two equal groups. The first group
exhibits a high intensity of suppression; it goes back to militant agitation
against France in 1798 and it also includes suppression during World War I
and the Cold War. The other group, with less intense suppression,
encompasses the Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Even in this
latter group, however, government measures included such moments as the mass
internment of Japanese during World War II and the aggressive use of the FBI
to infiltrate and disrupt activist organizations during Vietnam.

In the process of his review, Stone notes the emergence of several
additional important patterns. Suppression of dissent has often been used to
tighten control of political power. This is clear from the very first case,
where Federalists used the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to prosecute
political opponents such as Congressman Matthew Lyon. Restrictive laws and
actions during wartime have often drawn heavily on nationalist and racist
sentiments, such as attacks on Germans and Irish during World War I and on
the Japanese during World War II. Instead of providing a check on such
persecution, the courts were largely caught up in the nationalist intensity
themselves.

As infringement on civil liberties both intensified and took creative
new directions, the public backlash, which followed after the crisis passed,
pushed the courts to increasingly strengthen protections for dissenters.
There is an irony here, though, as the courts consistently moved to defend
activists only after they had already been prosecuted, and later officials
would consistently suppress dissent by means of new mechanisms.

Stone reads the continued tightening of judicial protections for
dissenters with an optimistic eye. He is clearly and openly interested in
the ways that the law itself can be used to allow all voices to be heard,
even under the most extreme circumstances. Although his faith is unshaken,
even given the evidence he has here accumulated, he still presents—with
sensitivity—the voices of others, including several who themselves critique
fundamental weaknesses where the law and the foundational self-interest of
the state intersect. Indeed, this book encourages the core observation that
national security trumps open discourse during times of national crisis. How
can history restrict its respect to the progression of the law when
meaningful dissent and resistance so often forces people outside of its
slippery, shifting borders?

Reference

GeoffreyR.Stone. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the
War on Terrorism. W.W. Norton, 2004.